


kintsugi

by soislibre



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, all that good shit am i fucking RIGHT ladies, ergo: this absolute catastrophe, i love jean moreau a lot!!!, jeremy is a crier no i won't be taking questions at this time, so does jeremy, the usual warnings for mentions of riko am i right, this formatting is a whole joke btw xx
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24422782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soislibre/pseuds/soislibre
Summary: golden repair
Relationships: Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau
Comments: 5
Kudos: 68





	kintsugi

It’s the night. 

It’s the hours between dark and dawn, that liminal space where time stretches out and out again,where seconds become days and minutes become seconds. The hours that Jean Moreau fears most of all, Jeremy suspects, because that’s when his past can truly find him again. Even a man on the run has to rest at some point.

But Jeremy isn’t on the run.

He’s never been a light sleeper before. He used to be a six alarms kind of guy, the one whose alarm clock woke every other member of the household before it woke him. At least eight hours a night, stirring for neither god nor man. Now he wakes at the creak of a floorboard, at a breath that’s slightly harsher than the ones before it. To make things sound more complicated - he prefers the word _poetic -_ than they need to be, he’s a barometer, and Jean’s subconscious is the storm.

The storm isn’t always as bad as he fears it will be though, and more often than not he just lies awake and listens to Jean’s breathing until it evens out again. It gives him a lot of time to think. And Jeremy thinks a lot, Jeremy’s brain runs about a million miles a second at any given moment, so while time to think isn’t always great, sometimes it really is. Sometimes he needs to just lie in the dark and sift through everything.

He remembers, as he’s listening to Jean fight his way through whatever fresh hell Riko is managing to inflict on him from beyond the grave, meeting him for the first time. The tall, pale guy hovering by the side of the Ravens’ best striker (their second best, but no one voiced that thought out loud). He remembers the stark black lines on his cheek, the curves of the 3 curling and looping neatly across his high, delicate cheekbone. Jean had been silent, while Jeremy and Riko had exchanged pleasantries from one side and pleasant but poorly disguised jabs from the other. He had hardly even met Jeremy’s eyes. Jean had stared over his head and Jeremy had given up on trying to get words out of anyone but Riko. They’d been thoroughly beaten by the Ravens that day, and for a split second, he’d caught a flash of _something_ in Jean’s eyes.

He remembers the day Jean arrived in California. He remembers the patches of missing hair, the hideous bruises, the cuts and the scratches and worst of all the unfathomable emptiness in Jean’s eyes. For a month, neither of them had slept more than a couple of hours at a time. Jeremy’s homework was always in early, and it always came back with average grades; he’d finish it in those awful small hours while Jean sobbed after a nightmare and Jeremy pretended, for his sake, not to hear. Those months in Palmetto hadn’t helped him as much as Jeremy had hoped they would.

It’s strange to think how far Jean has come. 

Now he can go places on his own. Now he doesn’t somehow manage to accidentally - or maybe purposefully - pick fights on the court. Jeremy doesn’t have to field the constant speculation over whether Jean will ever really adjust to being a Trojan. Because in all honesty, he won’t. He’ll never truly be one, because Evermore casts a horribly long shadow and Jean is only human. There’s only so far he can run before he has to slow down. But the sun moves and shadows do too, and with every month that passes Jean spends more time in the sun than in the shade. 

It’s not even just in a figurative sense; Jeremy never knew Jean would freckle until Jean’s first summer in California, when he’d noticed the smattering of marks across Jean’s crooked nose that not even Jean had noticed. 

But in the figurative sense, too, Jean is doing well far more regularly than he isn’t. He doesn’t wake up until 7.30 - that’s still a work in progress and Jeremy is _trying his best_. He goes to therapy on his own. He walks back on his own. He doesn’t skip class anymore, he can tell Jeremy loudly and colourfully when he needs some goddamn alone time, and he has friends. He has Renee, Jeremy, Laila, Sara, and they love him, they don’t put up with his emo, self-sacrificing bullshit, they do not accept when he says something thoughtless and needlessly cruel. They know his defences are up when he does it, but they talk them back down and Jean always apologises and always means it, and it’s _good_. It works.

Jean’s breathing changes again, on that hideous, gasping border of not-quite-hyperventilating, and Jeremy’s hand reaches across the gap between their beds to land lightly on the mattress near Jean’s own hand where it’s tucked up in front of his face, scarred fingers curled into a protective fist. He remembers, absently, how long it had taken for either of them to get to the point where he could wake Jean up from night terrors. All the conversations Jean had stalked out of, disappearing into their small kitchenette because he couldn’t stand to go too far from the teammate his mind told him he had to stay near. All the times he’d accused Jeremy of torturing him, of dangling his apparent freedom in front of him when _I know you don’t fucking mean it so why don’t you just get to the point?_ He doesn’t understand that this isn’t a joke. That Jeremy means what he says, Riko is truly gone, and Jean is free from everything but The Deal Neil made. The one to protect him, and the one that will hang over his head like his own personal sword of Damocles until the day he retires or dies. It breaks Jeremy’s heart to remember, because Jean deserves absolute freedom, but at the same time he knows that with that absolute freedom, Jean would either pursue the same path he is now or crumble under the weight of not knowing what to do. He needs a purpose, and Exy is and probably always will be that purpose.

Jeremy senses Jean’s movement before he feels it, the toss of his head and the change in his breathing as he startles awake. He gives Jean a moment to adjust and take in the gentle light in their room. The minutes shift and fluctuate again; hours, seconds, heartbeats. The first thing Jeremy had bought when Jean had moved in had been the nightlight across the room from their beds. It had taken him approximately two nights to recognise that Jean, though he would never admit to it, was terrified of the dark. Or, well, no. Not the dark itself, but of that moment, when he first woke, of not knowing where he was. That momentary panic that he was back in Evermore, sealed away from the sun and the breeze and the people who loved him, the people who would burn Edgar Allen to the ground for him. And though for those two nights, Jeremy hadn’t understood why he was _so_ afraid - why when Jeremy turned on a light after another rude awakening he didn’t snap and swear and turn away for fear of his fear being spotted - it had taken one gently probing conversation with Kevin, ten minutes of artfully skirting around details and saying much less than it sounded like he was saying, to realise.

Jeremy had cried.

Look, Jeremy cries more than some people. He’s an angry crier, he’s a sad crier, and more than once he’s laughed until he cried. He cries more than some and not as much as others and that’s just the way it is. But the tears he’s shed over Jean are furious and heartbroken and grief-stricken. He’s mourned Jean as if Jean were dead; he’s mourned who Jean might have been, the life he could have had if it weren’t for the Moriyamas. He’s howled his rage, his hatred, into his hands, into the night sky or his pillow or whatever’s closest at the time. He’s let his sadness and pity soak into Laila’s shoulder while Jean sleeps in the next room. And he has never, ever done it in front of Jean.

He’d cried over the realisation that when Jean woke in the darkness, the first thought in his mind was that he was back _there_. For a few moments, Jeremy was Riko, crouched at his side whispering to him. He understood then why Jean always scrambled away from him, why it took minutes to parse Jeremy’s words and understand that what he was saying didn’t hurt him. So he’d sent Laila on a mission, and sure, she’d brought back the most ridiculous cloud shaped nightlight from a baby store because it was the _only one I could find, Jer_ , but Jean hadn’t said anything about it, and that night it had taken him less time to piece his surroundings together, so Jeremy counted it as a win and kept using it. And had never actually stopped. So sue him.

Its glow is lighting up the far corner of the room now, throwing gentle beams across the floor, stretching out towards them but not quite daring to climb onto the beds. If it does that, it’ll break Jeremy’s fragile sleep even more, so he’s grateful for its hesitance. Jean is painfully still, and Jeremy knows he’s doing the exact same thing Neil does, he’s repeating to himself everything he knows to be true, every fact that he can cling onto, so Jeremy murmurs them out loud for him.

_You’re in California, I’m right here, he’s gone, I won’t let anyone hurt you again._ He’s reeled it off so many times that it has become routine, it’s embedded itself in his head just as it has in Jean’s. He says it over and over again, feeling Jean relaxing in increments, feeling him come back online and recognise where he is, who he’s with. Eventually, Jean takes a deep, slightly shuddery breath, then rolls over towards him.

An arm drapes over Jeremy’s waist and he smiles, relieved beyond any words he can bring to mind, reaching across himself to flatten his hand gently against Jean’s scarred cheek as a dark head comes to rest against his shoulder. He thinks for a second that he catches a whisper, as faint as if it had been carried away on a nonexistent breeze. But Jean doesn’t repeat himself, and Jeremy doesn’t seek to get him to do so. Jean’s chin is sharp against the hollow under his shoulder, but his nose is pressed into Jeremy’s collarbone, breath puffing warm and gentle against his skin, and his arm is so warm and solid and almost too heavy.

They lie like that for a while, until their beds start to shift apart again - pushing two twins together is all well and good in theory, but in practice it’s not quite so good - and Jean rolls out of bed to shove them together again. Jeremy laughs, props himself up on one elbow and reaches his other arm out to welcome Jean back into the warm tangle of sheets too big for one of their beds but too small for both, and this time Jean curls himself in a nice neat C-shape around Jeremy, who wriggles backwards and bends his knees up in response. They fit together like they’ve been doing this forever, not just the past five months. It had taken so long for them to figure this out; for Jean to come to terms not just with how he felt, but how Jeremy felt. There was so much trauma wrapped up in the idea of another person’s feelings for him, and Jeremy had waited and waited and _waited_ because fundamentally Jean is shit-headed and rebellious and he refuses to let that trauma get in the way of something he could actually have for himself. So it had taken months, endless fights, days of not speaking to each other, apologies and tentative embraces, light and chaste kisses to the few patches of unmarred skin Jeremy could find on Jean’s face.

And it’s worth it in the end, isn’t it? Because now Jeremy can feel the rise and fall of Jean’s breathing pressed into his back, now Jean’s nose is _just_ nudging up against the back of his neck, and he knows that the nightmare and Evermore and Riko are far away and disappearing in the rearview mirror with every breath that ghosts down his spine. He twists in Jean’s grip, startling him momentarily, and then Jean’s surprised expression melts into an exasperated roll of his eyes as Jeremy grins up at him, and their mouths meet in the not-quite-darkness. It is, as always, reassurance and affection and a promise of better times ahead, and by the time they part, Jean’s gaze is much calmer and sweeter, and Jeremy cranes his chin up despite the crick in his neck to kiss him again, then settles back into his original position and feels Jean’s lips press softly against the top of his spine.

Jean isn’t better. Jean is hardly even okay. There’s a chance he’ll never be how he used to be. But the way he puts himself back together, the work and the care that goes into reassembling an entire person? There’s so much beauty in that.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this whole thing in my tiny little peahead at 7.30am and then wrote it down in ab 2 hours, please forgive me for being a) stupid and b) in love with jean moreau
> 
> i do not take constructive criticism without crying x


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